Camestros Felapton on quoting people who don’t want to be quoted. I’m solidly on the side of “you say it, it’s quotable” unless “off the record” is attached. But having had one couple that spoke in a public meeting threaten to sue me if I quoted them (I quoted them. They didn’t sue), I’m not surprised this is an issue.

Fred Clark of Slacktivist has been critiquing the Left Behind series of Christian apocalyptic novels (taking place, if you can’t tell, after the Rapture has swept up millions of people) for several years. In this post he looks at how slapdash and illogical the author’s world-building is.

Maggie Maxwell on balancing minority villains with positive portrayals. I’ll make the added observation that if every nonwhite in your book is bad (like the entire population of Little Tokyo, USA in the movie of that name), throwing in one good Japanese-American isn’t balanced.

A recent piece on Clinton voters (the mirror image of those Meet Trump Voters pieces) got lots of flak, after which the author declared it was satire. If that’s the case (I’ve seen other writers pull It’s Humor when it obviously isn’t), as noted at the link, it’s a very poor satire.

Remember the copyright case over a monkey taking a selfie with a photographer’s camera? An appellate court has ruled that US copyright law gives zero rights to animals.

Olivia deHaviland sued over the TV movie Feud on the grounds her portrayal in the film wasn’t accurate. The judge’s ruling: deHaviland’s “right of publicity” (to control how her likeness and name are used or marketed) doesn’t give someone the right to censor inaccurate portrayals.